suscitatio angelorum
by anonymne
Summary: [FF IX] The cliché: Suppose that, somehow, Kuja survived the end of FFIX and was restored. Revolves around Kuja, a wizard, and that wizard's enterprises. Partially AU. Will have shounen ai in later chapters.
1. réveillez

**Copyrights**: Kuja, FFIX, and all other references to Final Fantasy just don't belong to me. I doubt I'd be writing this if I did.

Note that later on there will be hints of shounen-ai - that is, two guys in a romantic relationship. I don't plan on going past some kissing, but those of you who don't appreciate that kind of thing should steer clear of this fanfic in particular. The first few parts have none of it, but nevertheless.

Anyway. Kuja doesn't belong to me, but the other characters featured, for the most part, are mine (Sardolasperion and Sariyah, especially). Both their character concepts are mine, as well.  
Thanks for putting up with the babbling. On with the show...

---

_He awoke with a start, though his body did not jerk with surprise. The stiffness that stung his muscles prevented movement.  
_

_Cold hands... cold. That was what he remembered. Other than crashing masses of vines, the feeling of unhope - consuming and black as tar; the feeling of a creature covering him, the green vines striking and forming the constricting shell. Blacking out. Scraping at his skin; injuries leaking him onto the rumbling ground of the Tree; tearing. Tearing as he was unconscious, thorns, but the warmth of the other always there, defending him, always.  
_

_But how had he made his way here? Here, with the cold hands, the same feeling that had carried him to wherever he was now - but not the same hands. Those had been different hands. These were smoother. But all of them were cold, colder than he would have imagined them ever to be. Hands should never have been that cold, but they were, dreadfully so, and he was struck with a vile disgust.  
_

_The disgust was never expressed, though, as his muscles pained him too much to move. His wounds... he was numb all over, and there was no feeling in his skin, simply coldness - the air was cool, that which he lay upon was cold, the hands clumsily touching his wounds. All of them were cold. He could have done with a blanket - or that creature, that selfless genome which had risked his life to protect the terrible cause of the terrible crimes against his adopted home.  
_

_There had been warmth then. Now all he felt was ice.  
_

_He fell into it, his consciousness swallowed up in frigid blackness._

When he next awoke, the feeling was different. The air was still cool, but he was covered; there was sensation now in his limbs. He could hear fluttering wings through the numb veil that followed awakening: it was there, and he could acknowledge it, but it was blurred. His vision was not present, as his eyes were closed. He kept them that way.

Fluttering wings, again. Soft fur touched a wound in his arm, left uncovered by the blanket; again the touch was numbed, but not by sleep. His arm felt heavy and cold on the inside, as though ice were in the vein.

There was a sharp stab there; not enough to hurt immensely, but it was dreadfully present, and it made Kuja gasp. Whatever was making holes in him - as he was sure it was doing - didn't seem to notice or to care. It simply continued with the rows of stabbing, and the creature laying on the bed was certain it was pulling something through his skin.

The desire to open his eyes prevailed, and he opened them a blurry crack. His vision pushed through the haze and landed on a moogle. It was the wrong colour.

"You're the wrong colour," Kuja croaked, his once smooth voice reduced to a depressing croak. He was answered with a grunt.

"And the wrong size, too, but you don't hear me complaining." The (runty, he had noticed) moogle had a noticeably deep voice, scratchy and rather unpleased. Whether it was with Kuja's care he was burdened with, the fact that the man laying on the bed had reminded him of something unpleasant, or simply nature was beyond him, but he was wary of the moogle's tone and decided not to give him a reason to stab him in an unfrozen area using the needle he wielded.

Kuja closed his eyes, but remained awake. "What is the purpose of this torture?" he asked, more or less aware of the answer to come. Another stab, this one more violent than the rest. The moogle was obviously not in a pleasant mood.

"It's not torture. It's medical necessity," it said, its black fur bristling angrily. Kuja cracked his eyes open slightly and noted with confusion that the moogle's eyes, which normally would have been beady-black, were a powerful shade of bright green. Stab, and he sucked a breath through his teeth. The moogle continued. "You're rather torn up, if I might say so - or you were when my golems found you." The thread - for that was what Kuja noticed it was - pulled the holes together with the moogle's last tug. He winced.

"Golems...?" Kuja asked, his head feeling somewhat half-empty. Yes, golems - constructs. Soulless creatures made of inorganic material and brought to life; though, in this case, he was not so sure they were inorganic. He distinctly remembered skin against his.

The moogle nodded, tying a strong knot in the thread and reknotting it several times as he spoke. "A couple. Golems and zombies, too. All of them reanimated using only the finest in necromantic techniques." With this, the little creature bristled with pride, and Kuja swore to himself he could see a glow of motherly pride in the black moogle's face. He tried to nod, but his head only rolled on the table a little. The moogle bit the last length of thread as close to the knots as possible.

"Zombies. Golems. Are they yours?" Kuja asked, the question emerging from raw curiosity, and sounding nowhere as clean or smooth as he normally would have made it sound. This situation, however, was not very normal.

The moogle spilled a measure of some watery, cool substance on his arm, and as the numbness fled, there was a flash of pain where he felt the new stitches raw in his skin. The liquid managed to chase that away as well, and the pain fled after the numbness, leaving a newness in his arm. The moogle smiled as much as a creature like it could.

"Yes, they are mine. They are my creations. It sounds silly to have a moogle necromancer, doesn't it?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I'm not a moogle, you realize," he continued, mopping up the orange substance with a little cloth he had pulled from a nearby table. "My name is Sardolasperion, and I was a wizard, many years ago." Kuja tried to nod, this time finding it was possible. Warmth had somehow crept into his muscles. "Sardolasperion. I recognise the name, but it is vague."

Sardolasperion shrugged a little. "I can't say I was popular... but I was powerful," he hissed, eyes gleaming. "The universities rejected many of my proposals, but I did continue to research, to create." He gleamed with pride, then hesitated, and sat primly on the surgical table next to Kuja's head. "You may call me Asper. You can sit up, if you like."

Kuja did so, with relief, his eyes closed - he could only feel a sense of relief, relaxation, freedom flow through him. He felt new, like his arm.

And his eyes opened, and all feelings of warmth and relief were lain to waste.

His arms - once full of numbing tears, the larger of which had been sewn back together - were white and rose and blue with scars. The beautiful, immaculate skin - all but torn away and thrown to the ground. Kuja felt the shock tingle him; he pulled the blanket away from his legs and bottom half, and there he saw nearly the same, white porcelain marred with cracks beyond the repair of a simple cure spell.

There were no words for the shock, hopelessness, or mortification Kuja felt at that moment. His heart skipped a beat; his shoulders, his chest, the palms of his hands... all sewn together. He raised shaky, terrified hands to his face - he felt a thin webwork of lesions keeping his cheeks together, covering his immaculate face... his once immaculate face. The purity, the whiteness of the skin... destroyed. Doubling over to clutch his legs to his chest, he let out a powerful, deep sob and buried his face in his knees. The ruination he felt - the fall from grace - everything; he was supposed to be dead, he would rather be dead than patched together.

After he had had a good burst of crying, Kuja wiped his nose, then his eyes, and muttered, "What have you done to me?"

Asper smiled slightly, untouched by the white-haired man's tears. "I have rebuilt you. Put you back together from being torn apart." Turning and flitting from the surgical table to the floor, Asper continued. "Follow me. I have more suitable accomodations for warm-blooded creatures such as yourself." And with that, he ambled off, flapping his wings to speed his movement.

Kuja sat stiffly for a long moment, frustration and anger blurring his vision with tears again. He reached up to touch his hair - the lengths had been sheared off, leaving him with hair not much longer than his chin. Of all the things the moogle could have left the same... his eyes burned again. Getting up from the table and covering himself in the blanket to render his ruined body invisible, he stepped slowly after the sound of a moving moogle.

_finit: premier chapitre_


	2. calmez, installez

**Copyrights**: Kuja, FFIX, the Iifa Tree and all other references to Final Fantasy just don't belong to me.

Note, again, that later on there will be shounen-ai. Don't expect it to come up fast, but it's coming; the first few parts have none of it, but I do plan on incorporating it as a major plot point.

Anyway. Kuja doesn't belong to me, but most of the other characters featured are mine (Sardolasperion and, later on, Sariyah, especially). Both their character concepts are mine, as well.

Thanks for putting up with the babbling. Here goes chapter 2!

---

Asper led Kuja through darkened corridors lit by little more than floating wisps of cold blue fire. As the medical room had, the entire network of cavelike corridors was cold, chilling to the bone as though refrigerated. He noticed that the walls were almost wooden; it looked as though someone had hollowed out a length of wood with a chisel. The floors were lined with cold stone tiles that felt smooth and glacial against Kuja's naked feet; he hoped the 'more suitable accomodations' were at least heated.

The little moogle, half-flitting across the stone floor, led him into a length of hallway whose walls were petrified and polished to a glowing shine. Kuja was pleased to find that it was warmer here, though he did not shed the blanket he had pulled around his shoulders for fear someone might see him. Despite the welcome heat, he could not shed the pain of his mutilation. Finally, the two reached a rather tall wooden door with a symbol on it in red paint; Kuja recognised it as _madr_, a rune that, among other meanings, mean 'human'. He figured it had something to do with what was behind the door.

Asper pushed it open; it swung forward, though Kuja noticed that it had not been locked. The moogle faced him and offered a toothy smile. "Finally, I have someone tall enough to open this door. Now I won't have to keep it on push-swinging hinges." Leading the wrapped-up genome into the warmed, torchlit hallway beyond it, Asper waddlingly made his way toward the third door on the left. All three doors were wooden, polished, and ornately carved. They made Kuja feel almost as though he had reached civilisation again - but he knew better than to go too far with the sentiment.

The runty black moogle pointed insistently up at the doorknob; Kuja remembered that the bothered little creature couldn't get it open, as the huge round knob was about a third of his size, and opened it for him. The door creaked open antiquely, and the first thing Kuja noted about the room behind it was the smell.

It smelled like potpourri and age. The one scent was quite nice, but the overpowering smell of mildew was so there he could not get it away. The chamber itself looked rather like it had never been used - it was faultless, but disturbingly linear. A hardwood floor, polished to a warm shine; oil lamps on the tables and brackets on the walls would provide light when lit, and the bed was large, a stack of perfectly folded blankets at its foot. He could see white cushions, white enough to almost glow in the half-light, on top of the pile. A chest of drawers, in some golden variety of pine, was opposite the bed, and two doors on opposite walls indicated what Kuja assumed were a bathroom and a closet. The most disconcerting thing about the room was the lack of windows; blank, wood-paneled walls were hung with paintings or light fixtures, blocked by sculptures or had surfaces pushed up against them. A wooden desk was against the far wall, but the lack of natural light made Kuja feel somewhat disconcerted. The wood was nice, though, and as he leaned against the doorframe, he felt warmth in the veneer.

The moogle shrugged. "It's a little musty at the moment, but I'll see about getting some fresh air circulating in here. It's yours, though, until you're fully healed or feel like you want to leave."

Kuja's eyes flew wide. "Hey, haven't you 'healed' me enough?" He held out his arms, showing Asper the white scars running through the pale skin as though the moogle hadn't ever seen them.

Asper, more than coldly for a moogle, didn't even seem to care. "You won't have any magic, at all, for at least another four months. I've heard of your prowess with it, but I also know of rumours saying you depend on it." The moogle gazed at Kuja sharply, beady green eyes iced, and the words stabbed the man roughly - the little creature was right. There was no magic left in that little sphere of a reservoir somewhere between his heart and stomach; it was sucked more than dry. It felt uncomfortable and cramped up. Kuja scrunched up his face in an angered pout when Asper went on. "Your magical centre is damaged. You used so much magical energy in that last bout that you hurt the centre you kept it in, and it's incapable of storing anything anymore, even if it's a part of your soul, and not of your body. Refilling it using an ether or an elixir would probably hurt it, because of the shock."

These words infuriated Kuja, enough that he clenched a fist in frustration, but he said nothing. To his regret, the words Asper spoke were the truth - his magic was choked to the point of temporary nonexistence. One more spell, and everything - all the magic, all the spells - could have disappeared entirely. He counted himself lucky, though he could not help but stare in rosy-faced embarassment at the floor.

What was he now? He had made a list earlier, and retrieving the engrams to remember it was a bit of a task with the present ordeal. A soulless creature, meant to be dead, patched together and made living again, as living as he could be without a soul; and now he was deprived of magic for what Asper said would be at least four months. Four months and not a spell cast. And he had nowhere to go...

A sudden feeling of loneliness, great lonesome emptiness, as though he were the only thing floating in an endless black void - consuming, crushing, depressing. All he felt were more unshed tears; he had already cried before, and now he was angry at not being able to cry more. Sobs, choked and dry, scratched his throat, and he leaned against the doorframe dejectedly. He didn't even have his silken hair to cry into or hide in anymore, and it was all because of...

He looked down. Contempt. The little creature, smiling a smile dipped in sadism mixed with relish - the damned moogle, the wizard in a moogle's body. Kuja kept himself from grabbing the corrupt, rapacious little thing and ramming him against the wall, crushing his skull.

Yes. Crushing skulls was good. But at the moment, it was not a good idea, nor a conventional one, and he turned away from the feline faery to half-stagger into the wooden-walled bedroom. The half-light was bothersome, the wooden walls forming a box, the musty air reminding him of a prison; but it was his, at least presently, and he fell into the bed, grabbing a pillow from the end of the bed and curling up on top of the pristinely made bed.

"Sleep," Asper said, though before leaving he indicated a box on the night table next to Kuja's bed. "You can use the matches to light a lamp, if you need the light. Sleep," he repeated. "You seem to need it. I'll talk to you again later on about your stay."

Kuja was only too glad to hear the door close, and the moogle leave. One more sound like that creature's voice, and he would scream his agony for all Gaia to hear.

_ It was all gentility, like fireflies bobbing lightly around a sweetly bubbling fountain.  
_

_ The dream had come slowly; after forcing himself to deeper sleep he slipped into that dreamlike state that is uncontrollable but magical. The first thing he saw was blue; jewel-blue, bluer than the sky or sea, the great blue light of Terra. At first it was lovely, but then he felt only coldness toward it, toward the blue light that would control him if it had the power over him. He willed himself to turn away.  
_

_ And then the blue began to fade away, and the light became sharp and white, and it bathed him and made his spirit feel whole again; but he still did not feel happiness, nor did he feel comfort. He feared the light - feared the control.  
_

_ But the light changed again, more slowly this time. As he stared at it, his stomach clenched to keep the control away, it slowly flowed into a soft green, and it was strange, but he felt it touch his face. It was refreshing and cool, but it made him feel warm and comfortable. He could smile again with the green light, as it seemed to care for him. It reached to him, and he reached to it, feeling comfort for the first time in a long time._

_ finit: deuxième chapitre_


	3. le petit déjeuner

**Copyrights**: Kuja, FFIX, the Iifa Tree and all other references to Final Fantasy just don't belong to me. Of _course_ they don't; it wouldn't be _fan_fiction if they did.

Here's the shounen-ai warning again. Not this chapter, though...

Anyway. Kuja doesn't belong to me, but most of the other characters featured are mine.

If you have time to drop a note about the way I'm writing this, about technical errors or continuity or if you just want to give a shout out, have no doubt that I'd be thrilled to hear from you. I haven't played FFIX in a while, so anything to help clean this (rather ancient) fic up would be hugely appreciated.

_ June 24, 2003_: Hmm. Just updated, and am listening to music. SA hasn't been getting too many reviews, but I'm not a glutton for R&R so I don't mind. So long as I'm writing! I just may have the next chapter finished tonight, as I finished this chapter a week or two ago and have, indeed, been writing since. This depends, however. Later, everyone.

---

"Good morning."

Kuja sat at the table and pushed the layered locks of white-lavender-silver hair from his eyes, but they resisted. The feathers that had been lost with Asper's shearing had somehow regrown during his sleep, and now they decorated his shortened hair somewhat awkwardly, looking out of place with his newly short hair. Even Kuja, in his shattered vanity, had to admit it looked pretty stupid.

Asper, flapping in the air rather clumsily, landed on the table in front of him. They had moved into a different part of the humans-only area of wherever they were at present; by now Kuja had deduced they were in the gigantic roots of a huge tree, though whether it was Iifa, Cleyra or otherwise was beyond his understanding. He had not ventured to ask regarding it, so his lack of comprehension was his own fault. Kuja thought this rather stupid of him, but he figured it would be best to wait, especially for Asper's explanation. Either way, it was best to focus on the present, and now it was time to eat breakfast.

"It's not morning, you know," Asper said in a rather snide tone. He scratched his black-furred hip with a tiny black claw and yawned unpleasantly; he didn't brush his dagger-like teeth often, Kuja decided, by the smell. "It's nighttime. The undead only function to their fullest in the evening." This was said in a somewhat indignant, annoyed tone, as though the patched-together genome did not comprehend the word 'undead'. The moogle yawned a second time, and Kuja could only hope he would not launch into another tirade. His stomach won the battle of wits, and before Asper could continue, Kuja asked, "What's for breakfast?"

"Mmph," came the answer. "Living things are so inefficient, needing to combust fuel," said the moogle, snapping little claws loudly as a command.

A lumbering creature, limbs as rubber, hands dragging to the floor, plodded from an adjoining room and up to the table. Kuja was thoroughly disgusted. While he had seen the undead before and, indeed, had had to contend with them often, this creature's face was particularly gruesome, though it did not smell or rot as badly as most other zombies he had seen. This one's skin was dead gray, more dead than the clouds on an overcast day, its hair was stringy, silver, and gathered in knots at its neck, and its eyes were black and hollow, sunken in like bottomless wells with too little water at the bottom. It stared at Kuja with something that, to his utter shock and horror, resembled intelligence. Zombies were not intended to be intelligent, and the silver-haired genome was alarmed. Still, the intelligence in the sharp, dark eyes softened into something resembling pity, clemency, understanding, and Kuja noticed the creature staring at his sewn-shut wounds empathically.

His heart was still beating quickly, and he looked away from the half-intelligent creature, embarassed and sickened and heartbroken all at the same time. Asper didn't worry whatsoever, and patted his hunched zombie on the head. "Kuja," the moogle said, demanding his attention, "this is Lanobred. He serves our meals." Then, his attention turned to the serving zombie and he continued the introduction. "Lanobred, this is Kuja. He will be living here with us for a while."

Lanobred nodded slowly, and looked at Kuja a second time, extracting a half-curious look from the feathery-haired one. "Kuja," the zombie said, and though its speech was slurred, Kuja was shocked it could speak with any clarity at all. "You will want breakfast, then?" the undead creature asked. Again, he was shocked. It could put together an intelligible phrase, which was more than many living creatures could do. Kuja nodded a little, still not venturing to look into the zombie's face.

"Breakfast, yes. Fruit for myself; something warm for our guest, if you can manage it, Lanobred," said the dark moogle, smiling at his gray-skinned artifact of a zombie. Lanobred nodded lethargically, and turned once again toward Kuja. "Do you have a preference, Master Kuja?"

Kuja had to turn toward the zombie this time, as he was sure any other movement would be considered rude. "Eggs would be nice, preferably an omelet. Any kind that doesn't contain mushrooms," he replied, smiling as kindly as he could. The utter revulsion, however, at this abomination of an undead creature, was overpowering, and he had to turn his eyes away once again.

Lanobred nodded his heavy nod a last time and turned to go back to the kitchen, closing behind him a door Kuja had not noticed had been open. He felt as though a great pressure had been raised from his entire being, and he exhaled in relaxation, glad to realize with his next breath that there was very little smell of rot left behind by the deplorable undead.

Asper could do little but grin. "Wonderful, isn't he? I'm so very proud of my little 'Bred," he said, and sat once more on his haunches before Kuja. "You see, all the people living in this complex are undead, most of them having been experiments of mine at some point. Lanobred, among others, has since become a companion of sorts, a friend."

Kuja wondered what sort of creature had such a social difficulty that it was unable to interact with members of its own race, much less on its own plane of living-or-dead. Still, he was gnawing to know where he was, and the opportunity presented itself. "A complex?" He tugged a little at a strand of sheared hair. "What sort of place is this?"

The moogle sat more comfortably on the table, staring into the reflection on the polished surface of the wood. "It started off as a laboratory. After noticing the effects Mist had on living creatures, I decided to try and track down the source and maybe use it to my own advantage." He scratched the top of his head, making the single antenna-like head-bopper, the sphere on the end a bright lime green, bob from side to side. "There was turmoil. Lots of monsters I wasn't able to defeat. It was really strange, so I decided to sneak in, with a cunning plan." With this, he tugged at his fur in annoyance. "So I ended up a moogle. Some disguise - I wasn't able to shed it afterwards."

Kuja nodded a little. He absently ran his thin fingers over the white scars on his other hand, noting that the skin in between was still as smooth as ever; this was no comfort, however. Asper continued.

"Months before, I had managed to resurrect a summoner who had died a few hundred years before in Madain Sari, and I used him to get past the barrier surrounding the Tree. Stupid of me, of course, seeing as we were just sealed in again. I suppose the barrier keeps a few spare eidolons, or something. At any rate, we got in, and the poor thing started falling apart - one of my earlier experiments, you see. So we travelled down into the roots, mainly because he was undead and I was a moogle, we're everywhere - we went unharmed by the things inside. I'm sure they detected us, but seeing as moogles are everywhere and I had a zombie with me, it was all good. Or evil, or whatever else.

"We made our home in the tangle of roots. See, roots curling 'round each other make some great cavities, and of course there're huge caverns everywhere under the tree. The best part was the abundance of Mist - and the liquid you'd get when it condensed. It took huge amounts of cold, but once you get the stuff cold enough, it turns into this lovely, potent liquid you can use in just about anything." Kuja lifted his eyebrows at this, but Asper waved aside his worry with a paw and a chuckle. "Don't worry. None of the chocobo eggs you'll eat will have been treated in it."

"Moving along," he said, and, indeed, did move along. "I decided that, as I wanted very much to keep the summoner I had brought with me, that he would become the first part of my experiment with Iifa. Failed, though, poor little creature. Afterwards, I sought out all sorts of corpses, juicy and... otherwise, and managed to create some very interesting specimens of undead - like Lanobred, as you've just seen."

Kuja shrugged a little, nonchalant. "What's so special about him?" Aside from the fact that he's got some kind of a brain, the genome mused, tail flicking a little.

Asper looked a little puzzled. "You didn't notice? His intelligence, his ability to feel, even if very remotely?" He shook his head. "That's one of the major discoveries I've made, anyway. Because Iifa Mist is made up primarily of souls - even if it's their waste, you know - any creature without a soul can have Iifa fluid - the condensed Mist, that is - placed into them, and thus have an emulation of a soul. And because their soul is emulated, they can feel some basic emotion and think to an extent. It's rather fascinating."

Kuja nodded. He had to admit, it was rather remarkable that any Gaian creature had been able to devise such a use for Mist, much less find its nature. Asper was most certainly more impressive and accomplished than the patched-together one had previously thought, though he still stood adamantly by his decision that the little creature was sadistic. "I'm impressed, Asper," he said, voicing how he felt. "So this entire complex is a residence for yourself and your creations?"

Asper nodded. "Yes. Pretty much. That's how we found you - you literally fell upon us, as it were. Somehow that other fellow escaped, but you managed to land right on our doorstep. What luck," the moogle said, showing Kuja once more his yellowed teeth. Kuja feigned a smile.

Once again, the moogle expressed his glee by bobbing up and down. "And you haven't heard the beginning of it, Kuja," he said, grimacing excitedly.

"Oh, joy," said Kuja, his grimace lacking the excitement to match Asper's.

---

"Breakfast," Kuja rumbled, looking down at the plate of omelet before him. It looked delicious - then again, in the state his stomach was in, even Asper looked delicious. But the omelet smelled appetizing, at least, and he could see, through the folded egg, the little sweet parcels of onion and cheese and olive that made it all the more wonderful to behold. "Hungry," he rumbled again, and stabbed a silver fork into it, too desperate to fill his empty stomach to think about table manners. Slicing through the perfectly cooked egg - just a little on the crisped side, at the edges - he broke off a piece of the omelet, dipped it in a little bit of sweet tomato sauce, which he didn't mind, and shoved the whole thing into his mouth, savouring the sweet, mingling flavours.

After he had chewed and swallowed thoroughly, he grinned ravenously at Asper, too glad about the delicious food to mind his manners. "It's excellent," he blurted, and proceeded to feed himself another piece.

Asper munched his piece of ugli 1 fruit affirmitavely. "I make sure to get all the best cooks once they've gone. They may not remember their lives, but give them a recipe and they'll make it beautiful." He munched a slice of the rather homely fruit, held in a tiny paw, and licked the juices from his face with a green tongue. Kuja had noticed the colour of Asper's tongue before, but hadn't remarked; he had noticed that most of the other areas that were normally pink were green, as well, and assumed it was just a fluke that came along with his disguise.

He, as he bit another sweet morsel of onion, then remembered that bit in the conversation about 'placing Iifa fluid into creatures without a soul', simultaneously recalling the colour of Iifa mist - blazing, bright green. He locked his eyes upon Asper as he savoured the flavour of his omelet, examining the green tones of his head-bobber and eyes, as the moogle daintly stuffed himself with citrus fruit.

"What about you?" Kuja asked, dipping a little of his omelet into the sweet tomato sauce before putting the bit on his tongue to enjoy it thoroughly. The tomato sauce had just enough tanginess, and contrasted with the sweetness of the cheese and onions; he was exceedingly pleased, and stuffed his own face - though just as daintily as Asper was. He had decided that stuffing one's face daintily involved eating very very quickly, but neatly, and did so with great enjoyment.

"Hmm?" Asper asked, through bites of ugli.

Kuja stirred the tomato sauce absently with his fork, leaning his textured cheek on his empty palm. "Well, you're the wrong colour, but I figured black was just a personal choice..." He then stabbed the air before Asper with his fork, and, looking closely at the little moogle, asked, "The green bits confuse me, though. Does the green mean you..."

"...used myself as a test subject?" Asper asked, finishing Kuja's question almost to the word and ending with a toothy little grin. "Of course. Black was a personal choice, but either way, that's the best way of doing things - first-hand." "So?" Kuja asked, intrigued. The effects of Mist had always been known to him, but never had he seen or heard of such a thing as the experiment of inserting Mist directly into a creature. "How did it end up, other than changing pink to green?"

Asper adjusted his seat, pushing the fruit aside and gathering his little paws daintily into his lap. "Well, because I was alive when I decided to insert Mist-fluid into myself, I knew the results would be significantly different from those results I'd get from any undead creature - but the promise and the idea were just too much for me to resist, even with the dangers involved. So, bit by bit, I had Mist inserted into my bloodstream until my blood was fifty percent Mist fluid."

Kuja nodded, motioning for Asper to continue as he finished his omelet and reached for a kiwi that sat in the basket in the middle of the table. He split it with a knife and began scooping out the tangy flesh with a spoon, listening intently on Asper's talk.

"The changes were... significant, at first - nothing severely physiological, other than making my pink parts green; more mental changes. The first additions of Mist into myself caused hostility and very violent reactions - just general bad reactions. But after I got used to it being in my bloodstream, I found it to be more invigorating, and it cleared my head quite a bit, as though I had just inhaled a whole whack of ether..." - here he shook his head and made a face at the memory - "...so I decided I needed more, and more, and eventually it got to be like a drug." Asper grinned, but shook his head. "Now I depend on the balance of Mist and blood, and I get regular treatments of Mist. It's great. I'm like Super-Moogle."

"Mmm," the genome murmured, through juicy bites of kiwifruit. He was surprised at its freshness - then again, he was more surprised at the fact that anything at all was alive down here, in the roots of a giant tree that had once filtered the souls of Gaia into Terra. "That's all very exciting. You've made some fascinating discoveries, Asper, as to the origin of the Mist and its composition."

"Actually," said Asper, beastly face plastered with a blithe expression, "I was wondering as to whether you had anything to impart on the subject."

Kuja looked up from his kiwi, lips sticky. He wiped it away with a napkin, though his stare never left the merry moogle. "What? Why? You seem to have sufficient information regarding it..."

Asper gave a melodramatic shrug, his expression changing to a pathetic, almost depressed one. "But since you're going to be staying anyway, would you please at least talk to me about it?" His expression shifted again, this time to an idea-filled, inspired one. "A partner in research and development would be simply marvelous, and you don't really get anything miraculous outta the peanut gallery, y'know." He jerked a paw in the direction of the kitchen. Kuja assumed he meant Lanobred and the rest of the population of the complex.

"An intellectual equal would be astounding to have around," the moogle continued, munching the last bits of his fruit with pulp-stained teeth. "Someone upon whom I could disclose my discoveries. Bounce them off of. You know?"

The genome finished his kiwi and placed the empty skins on the plate before him, and reached for one of the cucumbers that sat in the basket of fruits. "Any salt?" he asked, acting as though Asper hadn't said anything. Fumbling for and with the salt shaker, the little black moogle brought the salt to Kuja, who lifted the glass container, sprinkled the grains on a part of the cucumber he had bitten off, and chewed. However, the feline creature's expression told him he was still intent on the question of scientific discovery.

"Um," said Kuja, munching the cucumber and marveling at its firmess. No fruit or vegetable should be able to survive down here and be so water-filled, he mused, enjoying the flavours of salt and cucumber mixed together on his tongue. "It'd be nice, I suppose."

Despite Kuja's somewhat deadpan response, Asper appeared thrilled with this development. "Oohoho, how excellent! I believe we shall start as soon as... um... as soon as you're ready, Kuja..."

In Asper's outburst, Kuja had draped himself over the chair, stuck a leg up on the table, and was munching the cucumber with one arm behind his head, apparently comfortable where he stood - or sat.

The moogle was a little shocked, but half-managed to camouflage it with a sweet smile. "I'll have the servants run you a bath, then, hm? We can talk more about this later."

1 Ugli (pronounced hoo-glee), a Jamaican fruit, is a delicious cross between a mandarin, a grapefruit and something else. It's quite true to its name on the outside, with a sometimes shriveled green peel, but the inside is ravishing, sweet, and seedless. It's soft and it just melts in your mouth. If you come across it, sometimes under the name 'uniq fruit', I suggest you try it, even if it looks rather unappetizing. You can eat it straight, no sugar or anything. .

_finit: troisième chapitre_


	4. le bain, la rencontre

**Copyrights**: I don't own FFIX or any of the concepts therein. If I did, there would be more Condie Petie and more Blank. Ah, Blank. 3 What I _do_ own are a lot of pseudoscientific concepts in this fic, most (up to now, _all_) of the secondary characters, and the idea for the plot.

No shounen-ai yet, but it's comin'. Flee if it squicks you, stick around if you're patient. Please don't rush me, this is a story that's more about Kuja's development as a person than it is about his love. Thanks!

_ June 29_: Prolific writing is made a reality by short chapters, yesss. :3;; I'm finishing up the fifth chapter as I upload this one. Fifth chapter -finally- introduces Main Character #3. Yaaay. :D;;

---

Kuja prepared to step daintily from the wooden stool into the porcelain bath, which, though somewhat feminine, being painted with lavish rosy flowers all along the rim, was filled a little too much with steaming water. The zombies, who had left him to his duty by now, had seemed exceedingly uncomfortable with handling the warm water, though they had demonstrated exemplary courtesy worthy of any Lindblum inn staff; he would commend Asper later for his good work with granting those two grace under pressure. The water was extremely warm, and a single dip of a slim foot into it made him yelp a little. Still, it was a bath, and he was just a little smelly. (Not too smelly, though - Kuja refused to admit his own odor to himself.)

The bath was just deep enough to cover him up to the base of the throat when he sat. He was amused by the fact that the tub resembled a teacup more than a bathing unit, though this particular teacup was furnished nicely, with a little ledge that held the soap and two small bottles of what he assumed were hair treatments. He had to search around the plainly-decorated bathroom a little to find a washcloth, but he eventually found a red one hanging neatly near the door. He had to swing for it, but after grabbing it on the second try he decided it was worth it. He picked up the rose (was everything here pink? he wondered) bar of soap, made the washcloth all nice and soapy, like he usually did, and began cleaning himself up.

Even before, in the lab, on the surgical table and the hours afterward, Kuja had never really gotten a good look at his pieced-together body. Now, however, he got a full view of it as he pulled the soapy washcloth over the inches of his stitched skin. Though his initial reaction was far away, he could not help but feel hopeless at the sight of his vile body, wrecked by the lines of sewing. It was a good stitching job, he had to admit, but when one looked rather like a rag doll, it was revolting to behold. His legs, fine and poised, were quilts; his arms were meshes, like fishnets; his chest had been turned from smooth plane to rocky terrain. Even his face, the glorious face that had summoned dragons and turned spells from thin air to tremendous explosions, had been replaced with this sewn-together monster. He did not stop to see the intact face in between the lines of needlework - all that existed now was the terrible feeling of skin... skin... bump. Skin, soft and delicate, then bump where the stitching began and ended. He could feel it all over him - he could feel the threads embedded in his skin. It was horrifying.

He did not like relying on someone's stitchery to hold him in place.

Picking up the rosy soap from the bottom of the bath, he cleaned what was left of a legend free of dirt.

---

"Back," said Kuja. The main hall, which held little save for a rich carpet on the ground and plain paintings in plain frames on the walls, echoed his words back to the pair.

"Well, obviously." The moogle shook his head and smiled a little, flapping leathery green wings to lift himself off the ground and into the air before the newly clean Kuja. "You look much better now," Asper said, smiling widely, to turn his face into a near-grimace.

Asper had a talent for knowing what to say what one did not want to hear. Kuja sighed inwardly - indeed, he was very clean, his sheared hair now looking a little more as though it was supposed to be that way, with a bit of natural flip that gave its uneven layers dimension. He had slipped on loose, dark pants, a long-sleeved, open-shouldered white article of a shirt that hung almost to his knees and hid his figure and skin effectively, and a simple black vest, made of some soft sort of cloth, that draped over his shoulders to his hips. He would have gone nicely barefoot, though because he wasn't entirely sure whether the floors in this complex were all so nicely polished, he wore rope sandals. The hems of the pant legs drooped over his feet to hide them, anyway. Asper, as a moogle, went freely naked, excepting a small gold medallion which hung about his furry neck.

He had to pause and search for an answer, but could only mutter an embarassed and unconvinced "thank you" as a response to Asper's claim.

Apparently unaffected by Kuja's lack of enthusiasm, Asper began hopping in the air before the genome. "We need to discuss some terms of your staying here with us, Kuja," said Asper, his wings pulling up on his back like a cat's mouth clamped around her kitten's nape. "And I think I have a good idea."

"Uh. Okay, whatever you like," Kuja said, a little nonplussed. He hadn't been informed that there were 'terms' to staying as an intellectual equal and patient to a crazy moogle necromancer, but then again, crazy moogle necromancers tended to be somewhat changeable in mood. Feeling sarcastic, he added, "You need a poster boy for your tailoring business?"

Asper made a 'psh' noise and settled himself on Kuja's shoulder. "I figured, a stimulus of some sort, even if just a bit of work, would help your healing process quite a bit."

The genome made a face. "'Work'?" Oh, he did not want to know what kind of 'work' Asper had in mind for him. He gave the moogle a disgusted grimace.

He shrugged his shoulders a little. "What, it's not like I'm going to make you shovel poo or anything. I'm not that cruel."

Cruel enough, Kuja considered, remembering his smarting scars and staring dumbly at one of the portraits on the wall. It was of a beautiful youth, not older than twenty, but young for his adulthood. Smooth facial planes, long black hair gathered at the nape in a red ribbon, eyes too green and large. He stared smilingly at the artist who had painted him, the moment being a frozen emotion of both regality and pent-up joy. The sweet, kind face was a picture of royalty - though, the youth wore no crown, and his clothing was simple. Most noticeable of the youth was the fact that, in place of a crown, he sported a spiraling horn - mark of a summoner. The picture must have been ancient.

The moogle noted his drifting into space, captivated by the memory imprisoned in the painting, and bit Kuja's ear sharply with tiny pointed teeth. The genome had to yelp in surprise, and his shocked jump sent Asper from his shoulder and into the air next to him.

"What on Terra did you mean by that?" Kuja's irate outburst was accompanied with an expression of disgust at the moogle's chosen action. His cheeks were a shade of red unparalleled by the carpets on the floor. Asper, on the other hand, was smugly flapping in the air, little forelegs crossed across his chest. "I needed to wake you up."

Kuja's reply was to furrow his face and roll his eyes. "Is it a crime around here to admire the art?"

Asper chuckled. "No. But I am getting impatient. Need to get to work for the day," he said. Apparently, Kuja thought, Asper was not one to laze around. Kuja shrugged. "You haven't really been talking, though. Talk."

The moogle nodded. "Well, I have an experiment that needs some tending to, especially in the first three months of its post-life. You're the candidate, because you're alive and it's different than the other undead creatures here."

Kuja blinked, looking at the moogle sidelong. "Different?"

Asper seemed happy that Kuja had taken interest, and nodded, taking his seat on the man's shoulder once more. "Different," he said, holding the reason back, to keep the genome on his toes, and maybe spark his curiosity. "It needs special care and education, and you..." Asper grinned.

"So... I'm going to be nanny to one of your constructs?" Kuja's spine tingled with a shiver. If 'different' meant anything like Lanobred, the serving zombie, he would be spend his time... uncomfortably, to say the least. "That's... great," he finished, his voice empty of all excitement.

Asper was giddy once more. "Oh, come on. It'll be fun!"

The next thing Kuja knew, the flying moogle had a handful of his shirt and was moving toward the door in the end of the hall.

_finit: quatrième chapitre_


	5. deux visites et un âme

**Copyrights**: FFIX isn't mine; a bunch of this fic _is_, characters, plotline and much of the fake science included. I don't put any claim on zombie folklore or the like, either.

Obligatory shounen-ai warning. Patience rewards those who are under its wing. If you don't think it's nice, don't read or say anything - what was that about 'if you can't say something nice, don't say nothin' at all'? Didn't Bambi teach us a good lesson there?

_ July 09, 2003_: Update update. Better answer some questions, huh (or the one question that my reviewers have all been wording so uniquely :3)? Before I do, I just want to point out: Yes, I do take several liberties with the information presented in the game, and present several ties between certain things that probably did not exist, really, in FFIX itself. Little of it, however, becomes very implicated in the story.

Also, pardon my awfulscience. I realise it's impossible for any of this to happen, but what can I do? It's fantasy, dears. :3 Also, for those of you who are up in arms about whether Kuja's scars will heal... not yet. It's only been a little while since he arrived at Asper's and got the stitches in - don't expect any immediate, magical poof of 'my skin is better'. If you don't like the fact that his skin isn't being magically replaced with a wave of the hands (at least, not for the first bunch of chapters), you don't have to read the story, you know.

---

The cavernous area, unlike the polished corridors and apartments of the genome-and-otherwise, was neither hollowed from a root, nor rendered shiny. The floors were hardened wood, scattered with gravel and paved here and there with slate slabs - presumably where holes and empty areas had once been. The walls were quite obviously natural, as long demi-cylinders ran up and down along them, crossing here and there to eventually make walls of patchwork roots. The lighting was dim and cold, casting a pale greenness over the high-ceilinged chamber, and, under the mute hustle-bustle of the undead workers, drips of humidity could be heard from every corner. Kuja looked up; like the walls, the ceiling was composed of a root mosaic, many tendrils of which began in the walls. In several places, everywhere in the room, little shoots protruded from the roots, curling out and around like the shoots of pea plants. On many of them, tools were hung. A creature or two were scaling the walls, pruning shoots that might get in the way. Many undead creatures, all of varying sizes and shapes but virtually identical in demeanor and skin tone, milled around the room, checking experiments, ticking off items on lists, pouring ingredients from one container to another.

The room was _huge_, and Kuja could have sworn that if gravity did not matter, there would be tables covering the walls and ceiling as well as the floor. It did not matter that many of the tables had seen their old age already and were teetering away their ancient years; several of them were propped up with what Kuja thought must have once been table legs, years ago. Though the tables were old, and the zombies doing their work were probably old, as well, all present were well-dressed and groomed, as opposed to the zombie archetype that lumbered around, missing a limb and wearing rags. They probably smelled less like rotting flesh than he remembered they should have, too. As Asper led him through the confusion of experiment tables, equipment shelves, stock-still work devotees and other surfaces, he could not help but admire the cleanliness of the entire place, for despite the archaic appearance of the zombies, the furniture, and much of the equipment in use, there was no dust, mud, slime, or anything else expected of a necromancer's laboratory. There was nothing, however, that particularly sparked Kuja's interest as of yet - then again, the lighting was dim enough that he couldn't see very much of what went on around him.

The moogle necromancer led, and Kuja followed. _It smells of chlorine and disinfectant here._ Asper was obviously unbelievably, heartbreakingly rich; to afford such precious delicacies of hygiene as chlorine to clean water, and disinfectant to burn the bacteria away, one required piles of money. He wondered how much it cost to clean this entire room once.

"This way," whispered the moogle, his voice quavering with anticipation and glee. He's almost shaking. Obviously, whatever this 'experiment' it was that Asper was showing him, it was something important. _To him, at least. It's a body on a gurney and he's going to show me how he puts the organs into formeldahyde..._

The disgusted Kuja was lightly pushed through a gap in the roots, into a more brightly lit chamber. Its contents was breathtaking - nothing less than striking.

Huge glass tanks, full of glowing green liquid - _condensed Mist_, concluded Kuja - lined the walls of the large circular room. The room was no less than half the size of the previous one, but it was much less crammed full. Only about three zombies moved around this chamber, clothed in long coats and carrying clip-boards. Unlike the others, however, they looked up at their master and his guest, exchanged glances between themselves, shrugged and returned to their work, checking the various tanks that were mounted on metal platforms, switching their clipboards for others that were sitting at the one table in the middle of the room, or sharpening pencils.

"Most of them are just tentative experiments, or ones that have failed. Of all the attempts, only two have really pulled through, though I have yet to assess the final results..." Asper flapped over to the central table, checked a few of the clipboards, and chatted a bit with the scientist-zombies, who had clustered around him and were now talking animatedly. Kuja was left to wander the room.

The tanks all appeared fairly uniform, the cylindrical glass tanks each being about nine feet high and at least three feet across - probably more. Each one held different contents; one notable tank contained a chocobo, folded up foetally, and looking rather... well, bald. A bald chocobo, floating in the green fluid, attached to what must have been tens of tubes - nutrients, oxygen supply, and others, he supposed. Kuja was somewhat amused, and let the smile creep across his face even as the pity flooded his heart - this poor creature might never see the light of day, perhaps being one of those 'failed experiments' the moogle necromancer seemed so bitter about. The chocobo was a young adult, from the look of it, though all the information he needed or wanted was scribbled on a clipboard that hung on the metal platform supporting the tank. He picked it up and leafed through the pages - it consisted mainly of daily status reports involving the chocobo. The back of the clipboard was what interested him, though, and he stared at the basic profile, interested. Its name was... Whied, apparently. Good name, Kuja snickered mentally, checking the rest of the statistics. Black chocobo. _Doesn't look it... then again, no feathers._

He hung the clipboard back up, and stared back at the discussing quartet - the zombies were showing Asper clipboards, talking about 'developments' the experiments had made, and the moogle was accepting the facts with open arms... rather, ears. Kuja took this as an opportunity to inspect the next tank, which contained a dark blur of hair that had caught his eye. (Then again, anything in a glowing green tank would catch his eye. This one was just closer than the others.)

He walked over, took the clipboard that hung on the platform, read the name. _Sariyah Nauphel_. _Better name_, thought Kuja, surveying the information. Male. That information was basic.

But the rest...

It puzzled him somewhat.

Race: Summoner. Age: Unknown.

One thing: Summoner - they were gone, most of them, save two. The two he had once fought... the canary, and the horned girl with the moogle. He stared at the clipboard without acknowledging it, brought into a frame of mind that switched him from reality to memory; they were few - he had not known the two girls very well, but he had seen them in battle and in situations outside of the fight.

The other thing: This boy's age... it seemed somewhat obvious, from his appearance. They could have estimated.

"You like?" The squeaky voice of a moogle necromancer said, from behind his left ear.

Kuja looked up at the boy in the tank, and guessed that he had been in there for a great portion of his life - he was insufferably thin, and against the milky green of the Mist he was a pallette of monochrome. Black hair, probably very long, sat tied at the base of his skull; white skin, pale as a crash of Holy, seemed very green in the light of the glowing fluid around him. His huge eyes were closed; a large portion of his face was covered with an air mask that, on a regular interval, would shoot out a few bubbles to indicate the boy was breathing. His forehead was... there was a tiny, worn bump of a horn, less than a quarter of its former spiraling glory, eaten away by decay and by the strange fluid about him. The genome's heart was given a flash of white-hot pity when he noted that, like the chocobo, the boy had been stabbed in several places to allow a great multitude of tubes and wires to penetrate his skin. Unlike the chocobo, however, his skin was covered in them, until he seemed little more than... well, than a mass of tubes, an experiment in a tank. Kuja reached up to touch the glass of the tank; it was cold against his fingers, and when he pulled them away several drips of condensation dropped to the metal base of the tank.

Mortification swept over him. _How? Why?_ Questions ran through his head like chocobos on a racetrack. Awe and fascination came in waves, as well - he extended an arm to lean against the tank, touching his right temple to think - these creatures, robbed of life, taken from the grave to be jolted into a now-unfamiliar world. They would have no soul. It was like... like they were being _bred_. A wave of sickness washed him.

Another memory touched his mind, of weapons in the form of creatures. He had said the same thing about his own - that they were soulless, that they would not feel the suffering. But this was _different_... he swore to himself, it had to be different. This was a human. Neither was originally meant to be treated as this, and now this summoner, this beautiful hornless summoner that he had seen so joyful in a painting, and his chocobo, who was ironically featherless and would remain so for a long time, were being bred _in tanks, as experiments_.

It hadn't seemed like such an abomination with the black mages.

That thought struck him like a headbutt in the chest. He suddenly felt confused, hot in the face; a thousand needles of searing realization jabbed into his head at once. He would have dropped to his knees, or cried out, but Asper's wings flapping next to his ear made him consider otherwise.

"This one's name is Sariyah," Asper added. Kuja already knew, but he shrugged it off. Asper pronounced the name too nasally, the letters, consonant and vowel sounds alike, being pronounced hard. 'Sariyah' was a soft name - Kuja hoped not everyone pronounced it that disgusting undialectic way. It dirtied a name that was otherwise quite pretty, he thought.

With the little moogle bobbing ever-so-enthusiastically at his shoulder, Kuja meandered his way back to the central table. Leaning against it, that tired confusion aching in his skull again, he said, "I'm going to take care of him, then?"

"Yes. It's a delicate process, but you'll get used to it, I'm sure. Just give us an hour or so - the assistants are preparing him for withdrawal now." Asper grinned, and phlomped down on the table next to Kuja, his kelly-toned wings going slack behind him, his face glowing as though he were a child on his first chocobo ride. "Ooo, I can't wait! Finally of finallies - maybe we'll have little Whied out in the next couple of weeks..."

As Asper rambled to himself, Kuja tuned out, his main focus returning to the tank containing his still-sleeping charge. The three assistants were milling around it, now; one had pulled away a metal panel in the base with a _clink_, and was now pulling levers as one of the other zombies read off scientific names from a clipboard.

"Trytophan, off. Manganese, off. Biotin, off. Cobalamin, off. Retinol, off..."

Slowly, one by one, she read off a short list of these names, names that did not register in Kuja's head, and the assistant on the floor pulled a lever with each word.

"Cutting him off his essential nutrients," the squeaky voice next to him noted, having perceived his new nanny's interest in the proceedings. "That way, when we take him out of there, he'll have to adapt to his surroundings."

The third zombie assistant was taking notes on the other side of the metal base, presumably from some information source provided there. "Status checks," Asper said, voice shaking with anticipation. "We're noting how he adapts to having his environment changed."

Now the two assistants on one side replaced the metal plating and moved to another sectioned-off area of the base. The same procedure was followed, the same assistant knelt to pull similar levers as before, and the standing assistant changed pages. "Increase environmental temperature by four degrees." Every minute or so they would do this, the third assistant taking notes diligently, until finally, having increased the temperature several times - again, nothing of a quantitative sort was registering to the genome - she appeared satisfied and signaled a halt.

"More environmental adaptation," Asper whispered, as though Kuja had no idea. Still, the silver-haired man nodded, his head feeling heavy. Right now, he felt more like a rag doll than he had before. The moogle seemed to notice his exhaustion.

"Tired much? You've only been up a few hours..."

"Four, to be more precise," muttered Kuja, kneading a temple. "Look, if all this is going to take an hour, I'm going to go have a rest. Please call me just before he's..." he looked back at the tank briefly, a flash of pity drowning his eyes and ears, "...he's removed." The word was emphasized with a distinct and bitter taste of contempt. He stepped toward the door, not even really aware of where to go.

Asper was too intent on the tank and the boy inside to care or seem to notice. "I'll have... one of the helpers... get you some help, mm?" His little wings flapped every once in a while. Kuja rolled his eyes, quite sure that, any time now, Asper would begin having heart palpitations.

"Yeah, whatever," he mumbled, heart siezed painfully, as the statistics-reciting zombie hurried to find him a guide.

---

There were no words for how he felt when he climbed under the warm covers of his (for it was his, now) bed. He felt like crying, screaming - no, caterwauling as loudly as his lungs would permit - curling up and dying. His heart was being eaten away slowly by the acid of his blood, acid that had been created with his cruelty, so long ago. Confusion flooded him, sweeping over him in thick waves. _How? Why?_ The questions burned behind his eyes, forcing a stinging tear out of each. The salted water stung a little on his still-new scars, and he rolled into a pillow to soak them away.

He shut his eyes, sealing them tight against any further move of his emotions against him. _Sleep_. He needed _sleep_. He began drifting with his desire, letting his breaths carry awakeness with them.

_ A beautiful, reassuring voice, rendered beautiful by its words, in the side of his brain joined in chorus with his somnal mind-chant. _Sleep. You sleep. Sleep now._ It was compassionate and gentle, accompanied by a lovely light, a familiar green light that made him smile, even through the sewn lesions. The light soothed everything that burned, warmed every frozen inch of his chest. His breathing slowed; the voice repeated to him the simple words, over and over again, _sleep; you sleep; sleep now._ It wove around him as a spell might, starting at the core of his chest and sprouting out, up and down like vines, warm and cool, relaxing his pains both emotional and physical. His head nodded on the pillow; he pulled the blanket closer about him._

_ The voice brushed over him like soft fingertips, cooing tenderly in a childlike manner - the words were almost sing-song, words without speech. Kuja imagined his mind was giving the words a voice that would fit them, one that was perfect to their cadence and pronunciation. He could not describe it. Reaching toward the light with mental fingers, he drew it close, held it to his heart, where it warmed him indescribably._

My heart_, he thought, touching it almost imperceptibly, wonderment and joy flooding into the very beat of breath in his lungs. _My soul

_ This was _himself_. It had to be the depths of himself, a soul in a body not always meant to carry one - he held in his arm something with which he had, for so long, lost all touch._

_ The globe of light pulsed dimly, fading a few shades of brightness, sighing to him hopelessly. _My heart_, it echoed, sweet and tender and frightened. _You sleep - now, my heart. Sleep.

_ There was an almost desperate tone in its 'voice'._

_ The genome nodded a little, clutching it close, as though to beg it not to leave him. It flickered again, a flame threatening to extinguish itself, a child giving up. _You are everything to me. None may have you, save myself. You are mine and only mine - something I dare not say about anything else. You are unique to me. My own spirit.

_ It shivered again, dimming, clinging to Kuja, its last hope to burning brightly. _I dare not..._ it whispered, failing to retain strength, failing to finish a phrase it had begun. It blinked out for a long moment, fear and desperation and sadness pricking its nonexistent speech. He clung to it with equal desperation. _You must... must be mine. Do not leave me - stay. Here.

I dare not leave_, it said gently, finding the words, its voice dimming in volume as it flickered. _I dare not stay. Sleep.

_ It jumped, flashing brightly, almost to return to its former light - and suddenly his dream-world was void._

_finit: cinquième chapitre_


End file.
